“You must be Nimira,” he said. “And I’m not sure I know you, but you must be related to Hansal Swibert.”
“I’m his daughter.”
“Annalie, is it? My goodness, you look just like him.”
He seemed friendly enough, and I’d certainly been waiting months for his arrival, but between his dark looks and strange lack of wrinkles, and Annalie’s comment about restless spirits, I felt unnerved. It would be ironic if the townspeople had been right about him all along. Of course, you couldn’t really sell your soul to the devil. Could you? Goodness.
He looked at our reddened hands. “What have you two been doing? Where is Celestina?”
“Laundry,” I said. “Mr. Valdana, sir, I’m afraid a great deal has happened. I’m not sure if you received any of Dr. Greinfern’s letters.”
“I do have a letter, as a matter of fact.” He was walking briskly toward the stairs as he spoke. “But I’d very much like to hear your side of the story.”
“Well, Violet is… there was a jinn who is serving the fairy king. Celestina was badly injured trying to save her… she’s upstairs. We all tried to fight him off, but… he took Violet, and he-he hurt Erris, the fairy prince. I’m not sure if you know about him.”
“Erris,” he said, his tone heavy. “The ninth son. Yes. Of course I know about him.”
“What do you mean?” I had to stop myself from exploding with questions.
Ordorio disregarded my question.
“Violet’s gone? The Lady’s magic should trump a jinn!” He started pounding up the stairs, muttering about seeing Celestina. I started to follow, but Annalie caught my arm and whispered in my ear, “That man is not alive.”
“What?” Fear slithered down my spine. “How do you know?”
“There’s something about him. I just… know.”
“Do you think he’s dangerous?” As deep as I’d waded into magic waters these days, I was still unnerved by the idea of waking the dead or even talking to the dead. Back home, we had legends of “walking corpses” that ate your soul at night. There seemed to always be a price to pay, at least in stories, for defying the laws of nature.
“Oh, no.”
“What does it mean if he’s dead?” I was whispering, even though Ordorio had vanished up the stairs.
“I don’t know. I suppose we can find out.” She shook her head and started to follow him.
Celestina looked as animated as I’d seen her since the accident, which comforted me a bit. She’d known Ordorio for years. He must not seem different than usual to her. She was in the middle of a detailed description of the kidnapping of Violet. “I’m so sorry, sir. We tried to stop him. I don’t know how he remembered her, but I will say, Violet seemed to have a bit of an infatuation with him. She’s been feeling a lot better this year, thanks to Erris, but she’s also been a lot of trouble.”
“How long ago did this happen?”
“Two weeks, sir. We’ve had a lot of bad weather, though. I’m not sure if he could have gotten far with her.”
Ordorio ran his fingers through his rumpled hair. “Lady’s mercy. I’ll have to think on this. I can’t stay in Lorinar long. And you, Celestina, are you all right?”
“There’s supposed to be a doctor coming…” I could see her struggling to look brave.
“I brought some books back for Violet, but maybe you’d like to look at them. Shall I bring them to you?”
“Oh-yes, please.”
Ordorio headed down the stairs again.
“Please, sir, I must talk with you about Erris,” I said. “I’m not sure if you know, but he was trapped in clockwork and I’m the one who saved him-in a fashion. He could walk, but he was still clockwork inside, and the jinn ruined his clockwork body, but we found your clockwork woman and animals upstairs-”
“You were in my study?”
“We-we didn’t know we couldn’t. Celestina had the key.”
“No… I never said it was forbidden, I just… Well, Celestina isn’t much for snooping, as far as I knew, but I wasn’t ready to talk to Violet about all of this.”
Any other time, I might have told Ordorio that Violet deserved to know a little more about her situation, but I still kept thinking about him being dead.
He paused. “Do you need to finish the laundry?”
“Eventually,” I said. “Please, Mr. Valdana, about Erris…”
Ordorio looked at the ground a moment, and then the window. “Something must be done. I can’t just abandon my daughter to the mercies of Luka Graweldin. He’s a tyrant. But I have never told anyone what happened thirty years ago. It’s a shameful, painful memory.” He looked at me. “I suppose the time has come. Maybe, with the knowledge, you can save Erris… and Violet too.”
Chapter 23
“It all began in school, I suppose. I was studying necromancy, so I dreamed of finding a better way to raise the dead. I’d always been interested in clocks and then automata from childhood.”
“The clockwork mice and the cat,” I said. “Erris read your notebook.”
He nodded. “I tried to keep these experiments to myself. I didn’t want anyone to steal my ideas. But, of course, I told my necromancy professor, especially when I succeeded at placing animals into a death sleep and coaxing them into toy bodies. It wasn’t raising the dead, but it was something no one had done before.”
Briefly, a devastated expression passed across his face. “I had done terribly well in school, and everyone knew my name. I had barely graduated and I had a position in the government, accompanying much more seasoned sorcerers on diplomatic missions to Telmirra. That was when I saw Melia for the first time. I was wandering alone in the gardens outside the palace. She followed me and asked me a few questions. I didn’t notice that she was blushing. She told me later how she loved me the minute she saw me, and I always told her she had awful taste, considering I was entirely ready to go to war with her people at the time.”
I thought of Violet’s infatuation with the dangerous jinn, and how Erris said she was so much like Mel. Indeed.
Ordorio was looking more anguished. “This is where the memories grow painful. Some months into the war, the sorcerers of the council made a bargain with a powerful fairy family-the Graweldins. If they helped us wipe out the Tanharrows and win the war, they would be the new royal family of the fairy kingdom. A secret treaty was signed acknowledging that the humans would control the Great Serpent River, while the Graweldins received generous gifts and concessions.
“However, there is a reason why fairies don’t have as much revolution and assassination and all the things you may have read about in our histories.”
I nodded. My country had a revolution for independence in my grandfather’s time. The king had been assassinated. I had grown up hearing exciting stories about it, but it no longer seemed especially exciting anymore.
“The fairy throne is guarded by ancient trees. Supposedly, they only lend the wisdom of the ages to the true ruler, and if an impostor dares to take the throne, the trees will die. The Graweldins knew the fairy people wouldn’t accept them as rulers if the trees died. So they needed a way to get around the ancient magic… such as putting the true king in a death sleep. That was, the trees wouldn’t know if the true king was only sleeping. Death sleep isn’t permanent… unless, perhaps, the soul is detached from the body. Or trapped in a false one. The magic I had developed proved to be the answer. It was daring, but…”
“Are you saying Erris really is in a death sleep somewhere. He is alive?”
“I think he must be.”
My hands were shaking. I had suspected for so long that Erris was really alive. To have it confirmed by the man partially responsible for trapping him in the first place… “Where is he, then?”